Ow ow ow SMD capacitors are painful to set!

[Jess Ragan]

Anybody got some handy advice for soldering aluminum SMD caps? I'm working on a Game Gear right now, and the caps are so tiny and their leads are so small that I can't get a good connection to the daughterboard. I've tried tweezers, but the caps are too slippery to hold onto them that way. Hot tweezers are too expensive, and I don't have a hot air gun handy (not that I'm sure it would be wise to use one; overheated caps can explode!). What's my best option? Should I look into dogleg needlenose pliers? I can't very well hold the caps in place with my fingers while soldering... it's a good way to get burned.

[Jess Ragan]

Okay, so the situation wasn't quite as dire as I thought. I grabbed a pair of bent nose tweezers from my Switch Joycon repair kit, and those seem to hold components MUCH better than my other pair of tweezers. Still not sure how I'm supposed to make proper contact with all the leads on that tiny little audio board, though. If I don't hear anything from the Game Gear when I turn it on, I'll know I did something wrong (and I'm almost certain I did).

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I just use my standard chisel tip on my iron to solder in replacement SMD caps on the audio board. What I do is clean the pads really well first of all. Then I apply a little solder to just one of the two pads. I then place the smd cap into place and heat up that one pad with the solder on it to remelt and hold the cap into place. then I just apply my flux and heat and solder to the other pad. Takes a little bit of patience. 

 

I actually do have a pair of hot tweezers and never use them. They are good for removing SMD caps, but due to how large they actually are, they really aren't practical for soldering them back into place.

 

[Jess Ragan]

Heh, I wound up buying a replacement audio board from some dude on Amazon. Seemed like the smart thing to do, rather than messing around with the old board.